macewan

Howto fix Firefox Flash Video Sound on Ubuntu Linux Dapper

June 01, 06 by macewan

Hey there I'm Robert MacEwan the author of ideal absolutes. If you're new to macewan.org, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting.

If after a system update you’ve discovered that streaming Flash is without sound - fear not. Dapper will at times drop the sound from Firefox & Flash, as always you need to search the forums before freaking out as someone has more than likely already experienced the problem and discovered a solution. Trial and error has lead me to the following fix on my system.

sudo aptitude install alsa-oss
sudo gedit /etc/firefox/firefoxrc

FIREFOX_DSP=”aoss”

After making these adjustment you’ll need to visit a site that plays Linux videos to see how well things worked out.

Ubuntube.net

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  • Streaming video in Firefox on Ubuntu Linux
  • Howto upgrade from Breezy to Dapper

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    82 responses for this post

    1. Stephan Says: 11.06.06 at 8:35 pm

      Thanks! Just what I needed.

      cheers
      Stephan

    2. Kenny Says: 18.06.06 at 10:35 pm

      Though this fix worked, I noticed that flash started to hesitate several minutes into a long video (on video.google.com). Firefox crashed after 12 minutes in. It may be my setup, but I wonder if this workaround is making firefox unstable?

    3. macewan Says: 19.06.06 at 1:13 am

      Kenny,
      What is you cache set to for Flash?

    4. Kenny Says: 19.06.06 at 11:27 pm

      It was set to 50mb; I increased it to 100mb. Thanks for the advice.

    5. aileen Says: 23.06.06 at 8:52 pm

      Thanks for posting the fix. It works beautifully.

    6. Planet Geek! Says: 29.06.06 at 3:50 pm

      Firefox, ALSA, Flash, YouTube, Google Video and SOUND!

      This one’s been bugging me for a while. I run Firefox on yawl and hunter pretty constantly, and occasionally would like to view some of the videos posted on YouTube or videos.google.com. While the videos have been playing just fine,…

    7. Roaikgid Says: 07.07.06 at 9:39 pm

      I tried this and it did not help. I have been having other problems with sound as well and have only gotten things to work that have an alsa plug-in or option.

    8. chimpoid Says: 08.07.06 at 1:01 pm

      Roalikgid

      On Breezy:FIREFOX_DSP=”none”

      On Dapper: FIREFOX_DSP=”aoss”

      Make sure that /dev/dsp exists.
      If not then try:

      cd /dev
      sudo ./MAKEDEV audio

      Restart Firefox and check again. If that works then add it to the end of etc/init.d/bootmisc.sh so that it will run on boot.

    9. Hamish Says: 11.07.06 at 7:08 am

      You da man!

    10. dougz Says: 11.07.06 at 1:43 pm

      Thank you!

      Flash audio had been working fine on Dapper until I applied this morning’s updates. Sigh…

      Your fix didn’t work after restarting Firefox, but did work fine after reboot. Didn’t check just logging out and back in.

    11. samyboy Says: 12.07.06 at 5:04 am

      loggin out and back is enough

    12. chimpoid Says: 12.07.06 at 5:45 am

      Sorry ’bout that.
      Old Windows habits die hard :)

    13. carlos lorenz Says: 12.07.06 at 6:19 am

      works good. thanks!
      ps: first I had to add a new line at sources.list. this one
      deb http://br.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ dapper universe

    14. dougz Says: 12.07.06 at 2:55 pm

      Well, the fix stopped working for me. No problem with /dev/dsp –

      $ ls -l /dev/dsp
      crw-rw—- 1 root audio 14, 3 2006-07-12 11:47 /dev/dsp

      $ cat /etc/firefox/firefoxrc
      # which /dev/dsp wrapper to use
      FIREFOX_DSP=”aoss”

      Fresh logout/login with still no sound on flash video.

      Tried invoking as “aoss firefox” with no joy, per Flash/No Sound thread —
      http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=187207

      Tried the suggestion (same source)
      System - Preferences - Sessions - Startup programs and add
      ln -s /tmp/.esd-1000 /tmp/.esd
      logged out/in — no joy.

      I can live with the flash audio/video synce problems. At least I could listen to flash video in Fedora. Dapper is very disappointing.

      Am I SOL or is there anything else I can try?

    15. dougz Says: 12.07.06 at 3:04 pm

      Sound back after boot. WTF?

    16. jeremy Says: 13.07.06 at 5:13 pm

      wish i’d known about this sooner! i’ve been lamenting the loss of sound since the switchover from xp (extra problems?) to ubuntu - but now that I have my google videos and youtube back, I’m a very happy camper - thanks for the help!

    17. Captain "HW" Murdock Says: 18.07.06 at 7:27 pm

      Thnanks for the fix!

    18. Il Filosofo » Upgrade Says: 21.07.06 at 9:27 pm

      [...] There seems to be better sound support in this latest version. Firefox and Flash on K/Ubuntu are known to have sound problems, but adapting this fix to my 32-bit-Firefox-on-64-bit-Linux-setup, I added a file named “firefoxrc” with just one line (FIREFOX_DSP=”aoss”) to /usr/local/firefox32, forcing Firefox to use the ALSA sound server. Setting the system sound server to ESD allows me to avoid the usual conflicts between the Flash and system sounds. [...]

    19. Jordan Says: 28.07.06 at 10:53 am

      Hey all,

      Thanks for all the info on this - it’s something that’s been really bugging me about Ubuntu.

      I followed the directions but for some reason whenever I used XMMS, the flash sound would STILL cut out. Here’s how I finally fixed it (might work for you if you had the same config in XMMS):

      1) Go to Options -> Preferences in XMMS
      2) Click on [Configure] for ALSA output plugin (under Audio I/O Plugins)
      3) Ensure the “Audio Device” is set to “default” and not the name of your actual sound chipset (mine was set to “SiS” chipset and then had (hw:0,0) listed). I think this is because it tries to take exclusive control of the same device file as Firefox and it can’t. Now I can play XMMS, Xine, and Flash sound at the same time!! Woohoo! (Welcome to the 90’s!!) =p

      That is what seemed to keep Firefox flash sound from coming up, even after the above fix. I hope this helps people who are/were in my situation!!

      Jordan

    20. ArthurA Says: 29.07.06 at 7:40 am

      Worked for me! Thanks a lot! (Ubuntu Dapper)

    21. Jack Says: 30.07.06 at 5:50 am

      Thanks very much man, an easy and effective fix.

    22. Syrra Says: 02.08.06 at 7:44 pm

      Wow, thanks. Now I can actually listen to all the cute little videos that get linked to in IRC. :D

    23. teknokool.net » links for 2006-08-03 Says: 04.08.06 at 6:57 am

      [...] Howto fix Firefox Flash Video Sound - Ubuntu (tags: ubuntu firefox) [...]

    24. Metroid48 Says: 06.08.06 at 8:58 am

      Hey, thanks for the fix! It works great, though it is a little less stable. Oh well, at least the sound doesn’t randomly drop off or get out of synch!

      Thanks a lot!
      -Metroid48

    25. Will Warner Says: 10.08.06 at 7:15 pm

      Thank you!!

    26. Alex Says: 15.08.06 at 1:04 pm

      It works fine with me! Thank you!

    27. DidIt Says: 16.08.06 at 2:23 am

      Thanks man… Yeahhhhhhhhhh. :)

    28. shiaminuet @Down of Ubuntu » Blog Archive » Howto fix Firefox Flash Video Sound on Ubuntu Linux Dapper Says: 19.08.06 at 7:18 am

      [...] http://www.macewan.org/2006/06/01/howto-firefox-flash-video-sound-on-ubuntu-linux-dapper/ Posted by shiami Filed in network, multimedia, package [...]

    29. Tom Says: 22.08.06 at 4:36 am

      Cheers dude!!!

      This did the trick!!!

      A log out > Log back in was required though

      Thanks again

    30. Dawid Szałęga Says: 31.08.06 at 10:56 pm

      Just… THX… Good work

    31. chris UK Says: 01.09.06 at 12:38 am

      Brilliant, just what Ineeded. This had been bugging me for ages after switching from XP to Ununtu. Thanks.

    32. Danny Says: 02.09.06 at 11:35 pm

      I’m having the crashing firefox after 12 minutes problem mentioned above. Apparently the solution is to increase the flash cache. How do I do this?
      Oddly, when I right click on flash to go to options the text is missing. This is also true of google video — clicking on preferences shows a menu sans text. Am I missing a font package or something for flash? Thanks

    33. Thomas David Baker Says: 07.09.06 at 4:46 am

      Danny - I think what there were saying is that it’s Firefox’s cache that needs to be increased. You can do this in Firefox at: Edit, Preferences, Privacy, Cache and increase the number (usually 50) to 100, or more.

    34. Eric Bandholz Says: 10.09.06 at 6:55 pm

      Thanks for the help. This fixed the issue.

    35. Matt Says: 11.09.06 at 10:06 am

      Good one. :) All fixed.

    36. Nick Says: 11.09.06 at 11:16 pm

      german@lists.debian.org…
      Also try doing an lsof | grep dsp to see who’s using the dsp at the moment. Might give some clues if the device is locked.

    37. Martin Dubeau Says: 12.09.06 at 5:58 am

      This fix works also for Debian Sarge Unstable with KDE 3.5, Firefox 1.5.0.6.

    38. biblog » Blog Archive » Problema con l’audio dei video flash su Ubuntu Dapper Says: 12.09.06 at 7:02 am

      [...] Uno degli scogli principali per un principiante di Linux è il cosiddetto “cambio di mentalità”: con Windows sei abituato a pensare che tutto si risolva cliccando una serie di bottoni “next-next-next”, e se qualcosa va storto aspetti la prossima release del programma… Con Linux invece, se hai una connessione a Internet, puoi fare MOLTO per risolvere i tuoi problemi in pochi secondi… Esempio: non ti funziona l’audio dei video flash sulla tua Dapper? Vai su google.com, digiti le tre paroline dapper flash audio e come primo risultato esce macewan » Howto fix Firefox Flash Video Sound on Ubuntu Linux Dapper, clicchi sul link e nella paginetta ti escono le seguenti tre righe: [...]

    39. Ubuntu Linux: How to Install Flash Player for firefox | Frequently Asked Questions Says: 12.09.06 at 2:04 pm

      [...] Restart the firefox. Some people may find voice is not working with newly installed flash player. Type following commands to solve this problem (thanks to macewan.org): $ sudo apt-get install alsa-oss $ gksudo gedit /etc/firefox/firefoxrc Find line that read as FIREFOX_DSP and set to: FIREFOX_DSP=”aoss” [...]

    40. Dan Says: 13.09.06 at 10:56 pm

      Thanks for the info on how to fix Flash Video Sound
      on Ubunto Dapper 2.6.15-26-686 it fixed my installation on a IBM t43 laptop

    41. Blog do Márcio d’Ávila » Flash para Firefox em Linux Says: 25.09.06 at 10:40 pm

      [...] Howto fix Firefox Flash Video Sound on Ubuntu Linux Dapper (em inglês), artigo no blog macewan.org. [...]

    42. PoPo Says: 27.09.06 at 1:41 am

      Thank you !

    43. Restoring sound in Flash videos within Firefox/Linux. « Salmon’s Quest. Says: 27.09.06 at 10:10 pm

      [...] I’ve been encountering this strange bug in Firefox — if I go to sites like YouTube or even Homestar Runner, the Flash video will play, but I can’t hear any sound. After a quick google I found, here, that this is a bug in Flash for Linux itself, and you can fix it by installing alsa-oss, then editing /etc/firefox/firefoxrc and adding the line FIREFOX_DSP=”aoss”. This has been tested successfully on Ubuntu Dapper. [...]

    44. Ropechoborra Says: 30.09.06 at 5:12 am

      The sound problem is fixed, but i cant i got tu do
      cd /dev
      sudo ./MAKEDEV audio
      in order to fix it..

      “…Restart Firefox and check again. If that works then add it to the end of /etc/init.d/bootmisc.sh so that it will run on boot. .. ”

      How do i do that? what do i have to write in the file?
      Thanks! =)

    45. Ken Says: 30.09.06 at 12:13 pm

      I googled for ‘ubuntu flash sound’ which led me to your site. I implemented the fix and it worked beautifully. Thanks for posting it.

    46. Wallace Says: 01.10.06 at 5:51 am

      Thanks mate worked first shot (thats unusual on linux for me at this stage)
      Now how to get this fix working on Epiphany??

    47. Nik Says: 01.10.06 at 9:35 am

      Thanks you!! works awesome!

    48. Don’t Drink The Coffee » Howto fix Firefox Flash Video Sound on Ubuntu Linux Dapper Says: 07.10.06 at 2:17 pm

      [...] read more | digg story [...]

    49. nathaniel Says: 07.10.06 at 4:02 pm

      Thank ; )

    50. pangolin Says: 10.10.06 at 4:56 pm

      I found this in ubuntu forums and worked for me:

      ln -s /tmp/.esd-1000 /tmp/.esd

    51. Gare Says: 14.10.06 at 8:46 am

      Thank you! After a reboot this worked like charm.

      For your payment:

      Weird Al “White & Nerdy” on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xEzGIuY7kw

    52. Juan Says: 15.10.06 at 11:24 am

      OMG! I thought I would have to reinstall Ubuntu. Thank you!

    53. Kza Says: 17.10.06 at 9:30 am

      Hmm how do you specify which device to use? On my system /dev/dsp is the webcams mic, and my soundcard is /dev/dsp1

    54. Erika Says: 25.10.06 at 3:30 pm

      To avoid logging out, after editing /etc/firefox/firefoxrc execute the command ‘export FIREFOX_DSP=”aoss”‘ or ’source /etc/firefox/firefoxrc’ in your terminal and restart Firefox from that terminal.

      Of course, you’ll have to do this every time until you log out again, but it’s better than having to set everything back up.

    55. videos youtube Says: 31.10.06 at 1:28 pm

      [...] se voc est vendo o video mas sem som, voc provavelmente precisa configurar o alsa-oss! o incio do assunto por aqui: macewan Howto fix Firefox Flash Video Sound on Ubuntu Linux Dapper abraos! __________________ Debian & Slackware Linux User # 325843 Voc usar a fora deve aprender: man comando [...]

    56. Me Says: 18.11.06 at 7:44 am

      Folks: you may be interested in figuring out how to get esd and alsa working simulanteously.

      http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=8882&highlight=hear+multiple+sound

    57. Furieh. Says: 24.11.06 at 12:52 pm

      Thanks a lot, man. It required a reboot but who cares?

    58. coppi Says: 17.12.06 at 7:45 am

      Thanks! Fixed !

    59. alec Says: 25.01.07 at 3:26 pm

      ok i dont want to sound like an idiot, but i dont know what to do, i see that everyone is saying it works, but i dont know how to fix this

    60. Patrick Says: 11.02.07 at 12:38 am

      After I did this the sound for EVERYTHING but flash did not work. My movies….

    61. Patrick Says: 11.02.07 at 12:57 am

      Nope it was just me messing with my PCI drivers… Delete my comments.

    62. brad Says: 12.02.07 at 9:58 am

      Thanks, I had to log back in after adding my user to the audio group. But now I have sound in firefox.

    63. Christopher Parker Says: 21.03.07 at 9:16 pm

      Just thought I’d join the chorus. Thank you!

    64. Eilz Says: 19.04.07 at 1:02 pm

      Can this work on Linux xDSL on the XBOX. When installing Flash9 I get no sound, but if intall FLASH7 I get sound but its very high pitched and cuts out alot.

    65. sai Says: 22.04.07 at 5:03 pm

      Thank you very much! This solved not only my problem with youtube videos, but also with Totem. You dunno how this had me puzzled. Now I can enjoy movies in my Ubuntu feisty fawn!! ^_^

    66. Mario Says: 06.05.07 at 4:41 am

      It worked for me - thanks for the useful manual ;)

    67. sonia hamilton » Blog Archive » howto get Flash sound working in Ubuntu Dapper Says: 23.05.07 at 10:24 pm

      [...] to macewan.org Category: Ubuntu  |  Comment (RSS) [...]

    68. jiMMy Says: 15.06.07 at 7:57 am

      Fedora 7 & Ubuntu 7.04 Flash Player 9 no-sound fix
      ————————————————–
      With Fedora Core 4, sound is enabled using libflashsupport.so
      However it crashes way too often. Luckily, we no longer need libflashsupport.so in newer distros (more importantly - no crashes).

      With latest distros using Gnome, under System->Administration->Soundcard Detection, launch “Audio configuration” window.

      ***Example sound driver***

      In “Sound test” tab, under “Device settings”, change
      “PCM device” from “ES1370 DAC2/ADC” to “ES1370 DAC1″

      In “Settings” tab, under “Default audio devices”, change
      “Default PCM device” from “ES1370 DAC2/ADC” to “ES1370 DAC1″

      In “System” tab, under “Configuration files”, press “Rewrite configuration files” button

      Reboot & let me know if it works for you.

    69. Jack Says: 16.06.07 at 7:28 am

      Thanks, that was really freaking me. I rebooted after that opened up a YouTube window and nearly deafened myself. Thanks.

    70. yafis Says: 18.06.07 at 10:30 pm

      I installed mplayer and had to face the same problem the fix you suggested did not work for me, I am using ubuntu fiesty-fawn though… can you suggest something?

    71. FIFIX BLOGS » Prdomas par Ubuntu » web,lietojamba,dizains,sports,informcijas tehnoloijas un izklaide Says: 12.07.07 at 11:38 am

      [...] no daudzajiem mzikas failiem. Sanca nelielas problmas ar skau. Tau ts var atrisint ar raksta un komentru [...]

    72. Blendor » Flash sound problems in Ubuntu - FIXED! Says: 20.07.07 at 3:15 pm

      [...] this a try, and for now it seems to work. If it doesn’t hold up, I might try the advice in this comment, but I’ll come back with an update either [...]

    73. goldenzim Says: 22.07.07 at 12:27 am

      I was tearing my hair out over this no sound issue. This fixed it for me.

      rm /home//.asoundrc

    74. Martin Fasani Says: 26.07.07 at 2:58 am

      Thanks!

      I got it working with Flash 7. With the new flash 9 was impossible to make it work I dunno why.
      In my Dell laptop works correctly for both, but be adviced that with some integrated sound cards flash 9 is making a bad use of the ALSA libraries.
      In some cases here we had to change the sound card to make flash sound work (Something that is just too much !)

    75. | Pārdomas par Ubuntu Says: 23.09.07 at 9:13 pm

      [...] mūzikas failiem. Sanāca nelielas problēmas ar skaņu. Taču tās var atrisināt ar šī raksta un komentāru [...]

    76. Frank Zappa Says: 02.10.07 at 4:12 am

      Never use sudo with a graphical app! Use gksudo instead. Otherwise you might foul up your permissions big time.

      sudo gedit /etc/firefox/firefoxrc
      gklsudo gedit /etc/firefox/firefoxrc

    77. msayed2004 Says: 28.10.07 at 7:15 pm

      Works for me , thanks buddy :D

      “Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.8) Gecko/20071008 Firefox/2.0.0.8 with Flash 9″

    78. حل مشكلة أنهيار الـ Firefox فى العروض الفلاشية فى Ubuntu Dapper « مشروع طبيب Says: 28.10.07 at 7:58 pm

      [...] * المصدر : Howto fix Firefox Flash Video Sound on Ubuntu Linux Dapper [...]

    79. Emilio Says: 12.11.07 at 8:50 pm

      Hello everybody

      I tried every single solution posted on this forum as well on other pages about this same topic, but I couldn’t get flash player 9 sound to work. Finally, I decided to downgrade it to ver 7, which has some sync problems, but which is better as no sound at all…

    80. NAS won’t play? Wrap it with aoss! « Maciej Bliziński Says: 25.11.07 at 11:30 pm

      [...] Replace: nice -n -10 /usr/bin/nasd -b “$@” with: nice -n -10 aoss /usr/bin/nasd -b “$@” As for Firefox, follow these short instructions. [...]

    81. Ubuntu Linux: How to Install Flash Player for firefox « Kuntzz styles. Says: 21.01.08 at 4:06 pm

      [...] working with newly installed flash player. Type following commands to solve this problem (thanks to macewan.org): $ sudo apt-get install alsa-oss $ gksudo gedit [...]

    82. nitin Says: 12.04.08 at 12:08 am

      Sorry guys,
      This is not working for me. I am on Debian 2.6.8-2-386, Iceweasel 2.0.0.3.
      Created directory /etc/firefox/firefoxrc. There was no file firefoxrc in machine. While playing youtube vieo i am getting these error continuously.

      ALSA lib pcm_hw.c:1357:(_snd_pcm_hw_open) Invalid value for card
      ALSA lib confmisc.c:670:(snd_func_card_driver) cannot find card ‘0′
      ALSA lib conf.c:3500:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_card_driver returned error: No such device
      ALSA lib confmisc.c:391:(snd_func_concat) error evaluating strings
      ALSA lib conf.c:3500:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_concat returned error: No such device
      ALSA lib confmisc.c:1070:(snd_func_refer) error evaluating name
      ALSA lib conf.c:3500:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer returned error: No such device
      ALSA lib conf.c:3968:(snd_config_expand) Evaluate error: No such device
      ALSA lib pcm.c:2143:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM default

      nitin

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